Melissa came in and nodded hello to the two ghosts. She knows Josh is aware of their presence but doesn’t like to be obvious about it and make him feel left out. My daughter is a just soul. She went to the cabinet and got cups for the three of us who would be having dinner.
“I’m going to talk to Paul for a bit, Josh,” I said. “Sorry about that.” I had specifically not said I’d be talking to Richard. Being petty and childish was feeling good.
“No big,” said my husband. He just went about his business with the plates, got some paper napkins from the cabinet, and set about putting them out.
I kissed him on the cheek as he went by. “Okay, so that’s your opinion, Paul. Why do you think that?”
There’s nothing Paul enjoys more than being able to lecture. “There are things a man in town for one night might do in a hotel room that he wouldn’t want to have to report to the police,” he said. “I don’t know for a fact that’s what happened with Mr. Zink, but it is curious that his room was chosen for the theft of the iron. It would be helpful to know if he was with anyone the night in question.”
“How will we find that out?” I asked as we sat down on the barstools next to the island. Yeah, I could have had an actual kitchen table, but the island is also good for cooking (Mom and Melissa tell me), and the barstools are actually kind of fun.
“We will ask Mr. Zink,” Paul answered.
“I’m an attorney, Paul,” Richard said, just in case anyone didn’t remember. “I can tell you that if someone lied to the police, he is at least as liable to lie to an investigator calling from another state.” Thanks for the incredibly obvious point, Richard.
“Perhaps so, but if the argument is offered in a way other than a simple question, we might be able to glean more information than the police. We are, after all, not an organization that can offer incarceration or other punishment for telling a lie.”
The pizza was a little cold, but it was too warm tonight to put on the oven, and besides, I was hungry and didn’t feel like waiting for my slice to heat up. “What have you got in mind?” I asked Paul.
“We can discuss that later. For now, I’d like to consider the day Keith Johnson was drowned. We have at least two people going into and coming out of his room before Cassidy Van Doren reported finding his body, and not one of them appeared to have been splashed with water, which is what we’d expect under such circumstances. That goes against the laws of physics, or it indicates that someone else was in that room at the Cranbury Bog. That also pertains to the wet blue jeans found outside the room.”
I considered bringing up the possibility that the person who had killed Keith Johnson had brought a change of clothes, but even in my head that sounded too stupid to say out loud.
Then Melissa said, “Maybe the killer brought a change of clothes.” It made perfect sense when she said it.
Paul stroked his goatee thoughtfully. “That is a very strong possibility, Melissa. I hadn’t thought of that.”
Go raise children.
Liss put down her slice of pizza and looked thoughtfully at Paul. “About Mr. Zink,” she said.
“Yes?” Paul takes Melissa seriously, which I consider a sign of intelligence, and weighs her input in investigations very highly.
“If you think that he was with a prostitute that night, don’t you think it would be worthwhile to check with the restaurants and bars around the hotel and see if he was noticed with anyone in particular?” She picked up her piece of pizza and took another bite.
Josh’s amused smile was just a little tinged with discomfort. Just a little.
Richard made some noises that were not exactly words. He was an attorney, you know.
Paul, however, was not considering the source, just the suggestion being made. “It’s a good thought, Melissa, but I was not assuming Thomas Zink was with a prostitute. A woman who didn’t know Richard would have no motive to kill him with a hotel iron, and that part of the plan was clearly premeditated. I think we’re more likely to find that one of the suspects we already know in this case—male or female—might have been Mr. Zink’s companion for part of that evening.”
“It still makes sense to check with the restaurants and bars, though,” I chimed in. “Liss is right—and the hotel restaurant and bar are probably the places to start, don’t you think, Paul?”
Paul nodded. “I would tend to agree.”
“It still seems that the person who . . . did this to me should be less the focus of the investigation than Keith Johnson’s killer,” Richard insisted. “Cassidy’s life is in danger.”
Again with this. “I know, but we’ve explained,” I told him before Paul could acquiesce. “The two murders are almost definitely linked. Finding one killer helps us find both, so investigating both murders doubles our chances of succeeding.”
I think Paul looked grateful. It’s possible I’m projecting.
“What about the research you and Maxie are doing?” Liss asked Richard. “Have you found out anything yet that might tell us who killed Keith Johnson?”
Richard’s voice was subdued, which made it sound like a grumble. “We spent so much time with that ridiculous laptop charade that we barely had time to start,” he said. “Silly playacting, if you ask me.” Nobody had asked him, but that hardly seemed the point at the time.
All our eyes (except Josh’s, which were sweetly trained on me, I noted) instinctively looked over at the counter where Maxie had laid the laptop waiting for someone to make an attempt on it.
And of course now it was gone.
Chapter 24
“Well, at least this time it wasn’t my laptop,” Maxie said.
We’d called for Maxie and Everett as soon as it was discovered my laptop—which might be old, but it’s the only one I have—had pulled the same vanishing act hers had not all that long ago. Maxie had responded by immediately looking for her own notebook computer and clutching it to her bosom tightly. That is Maxie.
“That’s a huge help, thanks,” I said. “You didn’t see anybody heading in this direction? And by the way, none of you geniuses thought maybe it would be better to choose a spot for the bait that wasn’t right near the kitchen door where anybody could have slipped in and taken it?”
“We were watching then,” Maxie said. “Location didn’t seem to be that big a deal.”
“So you saw no one,” Paul said in hopes of clarification.
“No, sir.” Everett was at full attention. “I had been pulled off guard duty before the incident.”
Everett is a lovely man and a dedicated soldier—of sorts—so it’s hard to get angry with him, and I didn’t. But the thought of having someone I didn’t know get access to everything that was on my laptop, complicated by the idea that I might have to lay out a good deal of money to buy a new one—money I was saving to repair my ceiling from a bullet’s damage—wasn’t making me good company just now. “Who pulled you, Everett?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, ghost lady?” he said.
“Who pulled you from guard duty? Who told you it was no longer necessary to watch the laptop in here?”
“Oh, that would be Maxie,” Everett said. I would have been shocked with any other response.
I looked at Maxie. For a while. And she had the perfect Maxie reaction. She said, “What?”
“Nobody was guarding the laptop,” I pointed out.
“You were right here in the room,” she countered, and dammit, she had a point.
It was a point that seemed to land right between Paul’s eyes. Melissa saw it first as his head twitched and his eyes grew wide. “What is it, Paul?” she asked.
“Maxie’s right,” he said.
“See?” Maxie said, pointing at me. Then she looked at Paul. “About what?”
“We were here the whole time. First Richard and I were here and the laptop was on that counter. Then you came home, Alison, and Melissa and Josh all came into the kitchen. There was no point at which that computer was left alone, and yet it is gone.”
>
“It won’t be for long,” I predicted. “There’s nothing on that laptop our thief is going to find interesting. I’ll bet it’s back before we finish dessert.” I looked at Melissa. “Do we have dessert?”
“Ice cream in the freezer.”
“You are losing the topic,” Richard said. “The laptop was here the whole time and still it has gone missing.” That only succeeded in reiterating Paul’s last statement, but I guess the idea was to bring us back to discussing the stuff Richard cared about and not ice cream, which I cared about.
I decided to throw the ball back to Paul. “So what are you getting at?”
“Alison, ask Josh if he noticed when the laptop went missing. He is facing in that direction.”
That seemed an odd request, but I’ve gotten pretty used to such things, and the word odd barely even registers in my house anymore. It’s odd if something isn’t odd. If you know what I mean. I looked over at Josh. “You didn’t happen to be looking over there when someone took the laptop, did you?” I asked.
Josh was putting his plate into the sink because we only use the dishwasher when we have guests for dinner or Melissa cooks. Well, let’s face it: we always have guests for dinner when Melissa cooks. My husband turned his head to look at me. “Yeah,” he said. “I saw it vanish like that.” He snapped his fingers.
Okay, I didn’t see that coming. “You did?” It’s not that I doubted Josh, you understand. It’s that I really hadn’t considered that he would see my laptop disappear and not even mention it. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Josh shrugged. “I’m sort of used to stuff like that,” he said.
“Exactly,” Paul added, nodding his head. “Josh is used to seeing strange occurrences in this house. He didn’t know it wasn’t one of us.”
I looked back and forth between my ghost friend, who obviously had some point he was trying to make, and my husband, who was clearing dishes and getting ready to wash them. Always marry a man who’s used to living by himself. He’s broken in on having to do things. What Paul was saying just slowly dawned on me, but as usual Melissa was a couple of blocks ahead looking behind to see if I was going to catch up.
“I get it,” she told Paul. “Nobody, none of the guests or anybody, could have come in here and taken the laptop. It was on a counter up against a wall, not near the door. They’d have been seen not just by Josh, but by anybody who was here, just like you guys planned.”
“Exactly,” Paul said. “And yet, even with both living people like you and people like Richard and me in the room, the computer managed to vanish right before our eyes.”
“Is it possible?” I was catching on at the remedial rate. “Wouldn’t Liss or I or any of you . . . let’s face it, anybody but Josh . . . have seen someone come in?”
“Thanks, honey,” my husband said, probably not even knowing why. He had his usual amused expression on.
“Melissa is right,” Paul said. “The laptop was on a counter next to a wall. It’s entirely possible someone could have reached through the wall, secreted it inside a coat or a sweat shirt, and gotten back out without being noticed.”
“A ghost stole my laptop,” I said.
Josh looked up from the sink. “Stole?” he said.
Chapter 25
We moved the discussion out of the kitchen because the barstools, although very enjoyable, aren’t comfortable for long periods of sitting. I suggested we move to the den where there are plenty of soft chairs and sofas on which to sit. There were no guests around at the moment. It was a lovely June evening, the sun had not yet completely set, and we were on the Jersey Shore. There was no reason for them to hang around my house.
Except that Mr. Lewis did come in as soon as we adjourned to the larger room and asked if he could talk to Melissa. She, having been briefed, hustled him to a far corner of the room where our discussion about the stolen laptop would not be quite so audible.
“So since we can be sure the laptop wasn’t stolen by you, Richard, Maxie, or Everett, there has to be another ghost somewhere around the house,” I said to Paul. “How come we haven’t seen him—or her—yet?”
Paul didn’t look very thoughtful. He clearly thought the answer to that one was obvious. “I think we can assume this particular spirit has some interest in staying hidden,” he said. “Whoever it is has gone to great pains in that area and has been very successful so far. What we have to determine is exactly what the ghost’s motivation might be for taking data off first Maxie’s laptop and now yours, presumably on Keith Johnson’s business dealings.”
“And why he doesn’t want to be seen,” Richard added.
Melissa walked back toward us as Mr. Lewis left the den nodding his head. “He doesn’t want to be seen because he’s stealing stuff from our house,” she pointed out. She had the good taste and manners not to add, “Duh.”
“Granted,” I said. “But how is it possible we haven’t seen this ghost? Most of us here have no problem seeing people like you, Paul. Why is this one different?”
“He’s taking steps to conceal himself, as Melissa said,” Paul suggested. “But if he’s staying close to the house, and I believe that to be the case, we should search the property again. I think it will not take long to find this person.” Paul very rarely uses the word ghost to describe people like Maxie and him. I don’t know if he considers it demeaning or if he simply doesn’t think of himself in those terms.
“Another search?” I, well, whined. “I don’t see the point. We searched the house from top to bottom the last time and came up with nothing. If this ghost really is taking pains to avoid us seeing him—or her—there’s no reason to think we’ll have better luck this time.” I, you have no doubt noticed, have no problem using the word ghost at all. If something’s a table, you call it a table, don’t you? Should Paul ever ask me not to say it, I’ll be happy to accede to his wishes. But until he does, he and Maxie are ghosts. Period.
“I would be forced to agree,” Richard added. Once he said that, I had to wonder if I’d been wrong to put forth my idea. If Richard agreed with it, I suddenly wasn’t so sure that I did. “What’s the differing factor this time?”
“This time we will be searching the property around the house as well,” Paul said, as if that actually made some difference. “I can’t imagine this person would go far before checking to see the information we said was installed on the laptop. When it is found not to be there, I would predict your computer will be brought back, Alison.”
Well, that was sort of good news, I supposed. “But, Paul . . .” I started to say.
He cut me off. “I know what I’m doing, Alison. We’ll split up. Melissa will take the upper floors, starting with the attic. Maxie, Everett, and I will go outside because we can move more quickly than you can and therefore cover more ground. You take the lower floors, starting with the basement.” He pointed to the front closet door.
“Paul, that’s not—”
“Please don’t argue. The person we are seeking has your laptop and will quickly discover it is not the one he sought despite our having made bogus claims about its contents. We can’t assume he will be as easily misled this time. So we are going to leave Maxie’s laptop right here on the coffee table as bait.”
This plan was getting crazier by the second. Predictably, Maxie was fighting mad—even more than usual—as soon as Paul said that. She zipped back down and stared at Paul. “Are you nuts?” she demanded. “He got my laptop once, and we were lucky to get it back! Now you want to leave it here with nobody watching?” No doubt whole seasons of Grey’s Anatomy were flashing before her eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Paul assured her. “We’ll see to it that Josh is here to guard over the computer.”
Maxie’s eyes widened to the size of baseballs. “The husband?” she yelled. “He can’t see anybody! How’s he going to keep my laptop safe?”
“He can see movement. We just want to be sure that your computer, the one with the real information on it, remains
in our possession. I assure you we are taking every possible precaution. And our search will no doubt turn up this person before there is any attempt made on your computer. Trust me, Maxie.” Paul was already herding Richard toward the back door. “Go ahead into the basement, Alison.” He pointed again at the front closet door.
“Paul,” I began.
“You have to trust me too. I believe the basement is an excellent starting point.” Another gesture toward the front closet door, and this time I understood.
“Got it,” Melissa said. She had no doubt picked up this subtle little subterfuge long before I had. The girl’s a genius. Ask my mother. Liss started toward the stairs to the upper floors. She was walking slowly.
I relayed Paul’s instructions to Josh, and although he looked puzzled at being selected for this particular duty, my husband asked no questions and offered no arguments. Where had he been before I married the first time? (Actually, I know where and it’s a long story.) He promised to stay on guard and watch for any strange movements in the room, especially toward the coffee table.
Paul and Richard exited through the back wall. Maxie, grumbling loudly about the injustice of it all, nonetheless followed instructions and left her laptop—which I noticed she stroked affectionately one last time—on the coffee table in front of my husband. “Make sure he’s watching,” she said to me and then exited out toward the front room.
I saw Everett, who had not been involved in the conference, through the gap between the kitchen door and the jamb. He was still at full attention, no doubt distraught that he’d given up his guard post and let the laptop be taken. He would not move until dismissed. I walked over to the door and pushed it open. I saluted Everett. He nodded gratefully, relaxed, and silently followed Maxie toward the front room, from which they would probably scout the front yard up to the property line.
Then after kissing my husband for being himself, I walked directly into my front closet and stood there with the door slightly ajar. Because that’s what one does.
The Hostess With the Ghostess Page 19
